This is borne out by the fact that there are alternatives that are: - dramatically simpler - cheaper - easier to budget while retaining the scale-on-demand

This is borne out by the fact that there are alternatives that are: - dramatically simpler - cheaper - easier to budget while retaining the scale-on-demand and hide-the-actual-hardware properties that the industry jumped for joy at. What they don't have is the nobody-got-fired-for-rearchitecting-to-aws bit.